Mukhtar Khan/APKashmiri Muslims carry Hindu children on their back uphill on the way to the Amarnathcave, near near Dumail, 135 kilometers (85 miles) southeast of Srinagar, India, Wednesday, July 18, 2008. (AP)

The Amarnath cave is located in a part of the embattled Kashmir Valley that, due to inclement conditions at its 12,000-ft. altitude, is inaccessible much of the year. The naturally built shrine is considered by pious Hindus to be where the god Shiva told his consort Parvati the secrets of the universe’s creation.

Roughly 500,000 pilgrims have visited this year. And the already meager tourist infrastructure in the region, burdened by sectarian skirmishes and natural threats like landslides and heavy precipitation, is beyond capacity. In response, the government of India-controlled Jammu-Kashmir opted to set aside 100 acres of land in the area for more accommodations for religious travelers.

This alarmed some members of the region’s Muslim majority, who saw the move as a subversive measure to populate the area with more Hindus, sparking protests that have claimed 15 lives since June, three of those this past week.

Hindu-led protests ensued in Jammu, where they are a majority. But now, Muslims in Srinagar, Jammu-Kashmir’s summertime capital, say that Hindu hard-line protesters have turned their anger on to them, setting their homes ablaze and attacking Muslim truck drivers.

But Muslim drivers of shipping companies still feel uneasy. Thursday marked the second day of a Muslim-led strike from work. State security forces fought stone-throwing Muslim demonstrators with tear gas and batons. Roads in the Kashmir Valley are at a standstill. Fresh fruit has been left to rot as drivers refuse to take the wheel, spelling millions of dollars in losses for the agriculture industry. Medicines are in short supply, and weddings are being cancelled due to a lack of mutton.

The summer’s protests are an abrupt end to several years of what the BBC terms “relative calm” in the region. India and Pakistan have disputed over territorial claims to Jammu-Kashmir since 1947, when the British drew up borders in the region.

Much of the conflict between India and Pakistan centers on Kashmir, a Himalayan region claimed by and divided between both nations. The border was drawn by the British in 1947 and according to the Council on Foreign Relations, was the root cause of two of the three wars between Pakistan and India. “The ongoing dispute over the region brought the two countries to the brink of another war in 2002,” writes the think tank.

Groups from Indian capital Delhi are heading to Srinagar to assess the situation. On Thursday Gov. N.N. Vohra arrived in the area, arguing that the protesters blocking roads were merely causing “a traffic disruption, not an economic blockade.”

An all-party delegation led by Shivraj Patil, the Indian home minister, is scheduled to arrive in the area on Saturday to hold talks with the Amarnath Shrine Board, and possibly with the demonstrators, as well.

Hindu nationalist group Srashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or National Volunteers’ Organisation, rebuffed a call for dialogue from a 30-member delegation of the Nationalist Muslim Front over the land apportionment row.

Turkey has been in its own ideological tug-of-war over the past few years—in its case, between Islamist-leaning politicians and arbiters of the country’s doctrinal secularism. On July 31, six of 11 jurors on Turkey’s staunchly secularist Constitutional Court voted to ban the AK Parti, which has roots in Islamism, from national politics on the accusation that it was trying to undermine the nation’s legal tradition of secularism. The court instead opted to slap the party with 12 million euros in fines and cut its national funding.